"It is a truth universally acknowledged that when a political party is in possession of a leader suffering great misfortune, they must be in want of a new one."
So wrote Jane Austen, as I recall, perhaps a little hazily.
If I slightly misquote, so be it. The fact is that all this morning's headlines, fuelled by leaks within Labour and the usual right-wing media hatred of anything to do with that party, suggest that Starmer's time is up.
As readers of this blog will know, I thought that a long time before he became Prime Minister. It gives me no comfort to say, "I told you so."
So, do I have an answer as to who the next leader will be? No, not at all.
Andy Burnham has no chance of getting to Parliament in a by-election now. Manchester has turned against Labour.
Angela Rayner's Tameside constituency has swung to Reform, and selecting her, with all the risks involved, would make no sense in that case.
Wes Streeting's Redbridge council remained under Labour control yesterday, with all seats up for election, but the party fell back, and he already has a very small majority, suggesting that he, too, would be vulnerable in a general election.
And there you have the Labour conundrum. It is bereft of talent, hope, and any chance of significant electoral success at the next general election. They need to be rid of Starmer, but have no effective replacement.
In that case, are we to suffer a government running what will, in effect, be their own closing-down sale for the next three years? Under Labour, that looks likely to be the case.
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Love it! Great post!
So, it this what you get when politicians ‘take things as they find them’?
I hope so.
But if the new leader ignored the issue of re-election, and did the radical things necessary, PR, significant public investment, and taxation of wealth accumulation, they could save the country from a fascist government in 2029. “Ask not what your country can do for you…” etc.
Are there enough Labour MPs patriotic enough to do that, and get their noses out of the trough?
I would hope so, in vain
It makes no difference who the next Prime Minister is and what party he comes from as the voters will NOT be happy.
No party in the UK seems wants to deal with the NHS problems, the housing problem, the school place problems or potholes nor do they appear to have the ability to deal with these problems.
The Far-Right can get rid of every non-settled immigrant in the UK and it will NOT help NHS/social care problems, the housing problems, the school place problems or potholes. Getting rid of non-settled immigrant will actually make the NHS/social care problems and pothole problems worse as there will no one to provide NHS Services/social care or fix potholes. I am not even going to get into crops rotting in the fields.
I know about this because the US is experiencing the results of ICE Deportations and the public is fed up (the 68% that think is doing a bad job). The results of ICE Deportations are NOT what Trump voters voted for.
Footnote: Have friends that live in Norfolk and their two biggest complaints are the housing problems which almost prohibits them from recruiting workers from outside of Norfolk for their business(es) and the planning commission constantly foiling all their hoped for plans to improve and expand their business(es)
You seem to understand more about what happens here than many residents do
@Professor Murphy,
It is because I read your blog and then do research to expand my knowledge outside of direct economics. If someone throws a bucket of water out a window, I want to know where it lands and what affect it may have.
With your new protocol on comments, one must do the research to keep oneself “up to snuff” and able to make relevant comments.
I would also say I do as such to keep myself from looking ridiculous but all Yanks look ridiculous in an English environment. Therefore, I do not mind making people spit out their coffee on their keyboard from time-to-time when they read comments from the crazy Florida Yank. LOL! LOL!
I appreciate your comments
After the disaster of 14 years of the Tories the country wanted real change and saw Labour as the answer. Unfortunately many probably expected something closer to the Labour of 2017 and 2019, one that took radical decisions that would make lives noticeably better. There are some good intentions but not enough to cut through the huge wave of media frenzy to make them seem like they are worse than a Johnson or Truss government, and ultimately everyone is feeling the pinch as the cost of living skyrockets with the people in charge seemingly unable to do anything about it.
Reform are no way the answer but the public have been convinced they will bring real governance and change, they won’t of course but shout the loudest. These are dangerous times.
I don’t think Reform voters really expect them to demonstrate good governance. They just want something, anything, other than what exists now. It’s a roll of the dice.
“Reform are no way the answer but the public have been convinced they will bring real governance and change, they won’t of course but shout the loudest.”
Trump shouted the loudest, Trump did NOT bring change and I will bet my bottom dollar that Reform will NOT bring change.
Change, that the voters want, can only be brought about by major changes in spending and taxation.
Well yes Labour is bereft of talent, ideas and policies. Listening to R4 just now was rather odd with Labour people talking about the working class and working people. These are somewhat outdated concepts now. People have identities and loyalties based on working status, earnings, age, qualifications, ethnicity rather than class. Thinking of my neighbours (and myself), I doubt if class is in any way a useful term. So we need to move on and politicians bleating on about class are clearly out of touch.
[I also think that the other parties generally are unable to provide the right policies. Plaid and the Greens are the best examples of a better politics].
There clearly is a form of class analysis that can usefully be done on the UK population, but it is not based on old fashioned (dare I say Marxist) monolithic blocks of the proletarian working class of game Tory workers and farming peasants, the bourgeois middle class, and the wealthy upper class.
There is an increasingly large number of people living in dire poverty, sometimes called the precariat. The young are being burdened with debt and finding it increasingly hard to find good jobs and establish a home and a family. The traditional working class still exists but has shrunk significantly. There is a small wealthy elite with increasingly large share of resources. And there are various sorts of people in the middle. And yet the UK is still one of the richest countries in the world. Billions of people in other places around the world have much harder lives.
If we keep moving towards right wing nativist ethno-nationalism, the whole political economy is going to blow up in a horrible mess. The US may be a trailblazer for the end of western democracy, with the UK following, and the EU perhaps as a last bastion. And China and Russia and other countries will look on with interest.
Meanwhile the climate will be going to hell in a handcart. The world is simply not taking the action as fast as needed. Bluntly many millions potentially billions of people are at risk of dying for lack of food, water, and shelter from an increasingly hostile planet.
Eat, drink, and be merry; for tomorrow we die.
The precariat is a useful basis for analysis, I agree.
I disagree. Class is everything. We talk about the other things you list in order to avoid talking about class; class is the elephant in the room. It is the only concept that allows us to look at other social groups at the fundamental level, You only need to look at the specific interests that our politics currently serves to realize that.
We are all categorized as working, middle or upper class, and even the working class have other groups they think they can look down on.
My grandparental background was working class. Now i am definitely middle, and maybe – some say – higher middle. So what? What matters is care. I disgree with you. Worry about them abuse, not the classification
To Karl – I agree. Your class does matter, meaning what you do to earn a living. It changes and of course what your grandparents did is of only historical interest; it is what you do now (or for the retired – up to retirement) that matters.
To Richard – Coming from the area between Liverpool and Manchester, as does Burnham, I’m pretty sure, chosen carefully and with hard work, Burnham would get a seat. I left there 50 years ago to find work and retrain (London of course) but have kept up contact throughout (in northern Scotland these days). Much of the anti-Labour pro-Reform mood is, sorry to say – but anti-South, and you don’t get much more “south” in that political sense than North London, Kent and the other Home Counties. Studies indicated much of the northern pro-Brexit vote swung on this sense also. But isn’t Farage solid south? Of course – but our voting these days is as Marx said (Groucho) – “whatever it is, I’m against it!” Farage is stick-it-to-Starmer in many people’s eyes. Ludicrous obviously, but given a northerner standing for Labour – he or she should get the constituency (if chosen wisely). Not to say Burnham has a clue what to do of course…
This is nonsense.
Class is not what you do.
It is much more complex than that.
And frankly it is meaningless.
Let’s look at the reality of what happens and not labels. Labels are what intellectuals with PPE degrees from Oxford or the like who call themselves Marxists do, and are irrelevant as a result.
And your political analysis looks far removed from reality. Sorry.
Fear not Brown and Harman have been drafted.
So after 14 years to plan what to do when in power there’s a hard reset to the late 90s….but without the talent.
What could possibly go wrong?
This is pathetic by Starmer, and them for accepting
It would appear that the Establishment would be happy with a Farage type government but never a Polanski one. They will therefore do everything possible to sabotage the latter in favour of the former. That will be the answer as to whether Starmer goes and if so, who replaces him.
If you read Paul Holden’s The Fraud and as John McDonnel says – just changing the leader of the ruling Labour coterie wont do it. It needs a thorough enquiry into the Labour Together operation including its illegal funding, and it needs Labour becoming open, transparent and democratic . It wont happen .<p>
All politicians admit that ‘on the doorstep’ people are turned off politics – ‘they are all in it for themselves’. Many voted Reform to ‘try something different’ . A real policy to clean it up – such as banning ‘donations’, second jobs, insider contracts, would be really popular – but obviously they wont do it.<p>
After all Streeting is being paid by private healthcare interests to demolish the NHS from the inside. This is corruption in plain sight. But its ‘legal'<p>
Despair
Despari
Agreed
I don’t think Andy Burnham is the answer, but I do think he might still win a Manchester seat despite the Greens doing so well. He’s won his mayoralty on many from other parties voting for him and thus could happen if he stood for parliament again.
I saw a good interview with Clive Lewis yesterday, one of the few decent left wingers left. He won’t admit to thinking about defecting to the Greens yet, but it’s becoming a much better political home for him under FPTP. I think though that the Labour party is now so far from it’s roots it’s hard to see how it can recover. Also our world has changed and we are no longer an industrial society where the major driver in protecting workers against poverty is unionisation etc. To me the Green message of social and climate justice is a better solution to our current problems. Whilst the Green Party was seen as the province of educated intellectuals, it is now becoming the home of many who would previously been Labour stalwarts. I see both Labour and the Conservatives slowly dying and new life coming from elsewhere. Young politicians are not looking to them anymore and it is through thus new life our politics will get invigorated. Yes we need wisdom from those who have lived through many governments, but the current Labour cabinet is devoid of such wisdom. I don’t believe it has the talent to recover.
We might not have factories belching out smoke, or miners going down the pit every day, but if you depend on earning a wage in order to live, then unionization might well be a vital and useful thing. Unions exist to mitigate the great inequalities in the employer-employee relationship, and I ask the question of who benefits when we buy the idea that unions are part of the past – certainly not the workers!
At a time of growing inequality we need the unions more than ever, and the unions need vigorous and far-sighted leadership that is prepared to see further than their hoped-for future seat in the House of Lords.
I am not anti unions. I have been a union committee member, but I do feel the issues are different to the ones Labour was started to deal with. And the current version of the Labour party is doing very little to protect workers’ rights. And I am aware of the new employment act, but that is more about encouraging movement between jobs then enhancing worker rights.
The Green Party has come out of the environmental movement and climate change and ensuring social justice has to be the primary issue of our time. The younger adult population get this, hence it being the most popular party for the under 50s.
When even my MP Clive Betts is on the radio asking for change then Labour are in real trouble. Surely, now is the only time that the government can do things that are truly radical. This lot have nothing to lose now and yet still have time to make significant changes for the better of the country. Introducing PR now has to be one of those first radical steps.
no love for Clive Lewis as a potnetial successor?
Clive is a friend
I am not sure he sees himself as a Labour Party leader
We have seen what happens when a core function of the state (money) is detached from political control (central bank “independence”) = a country that becomes poorer. The experiment “let’s see what happens when politics & gov’ is run by people who have no politics” seems to have run its course & was, as expected, a disaster. What citizens need is trivial: functioning health service, good education, fair energy costs, a functioning water & sewage system, a public transport system fit for purpose, roads that are not a succession of holes (large & small). 46 years of LINO-Tory has resulted in negatives for each of the public goods listed. The entire political class (HoC & HoL) needs to be dumped, PR brought in, time limits on “how long you can sit as an MP”, public funding of political parties & anybody who wants to be an MP has their bank accounts open for inspection by the public (I’m looking @ you Fart-rage). Written constitution, provision of certain services reserved for gov (national and local) etc. Oh & any political org (or political lobby org) that accepts money from non-UK citizens is guilty of treason and mandatory life-sentences applies to those that were responsible. Etc. Gov & civil service meetings with companies? – broadcast in real time on the Internet. Open government by citizens for citizens.
Difficult to disagree with Mike Parr on any of this. But all main parties and the corrupt media will ensure it wont happen. All he is proposing is an clear transparent democracy uncorrupted by money.<p>
But it is corrupted now – so the proposals would be revolutionary. So none of them will be implemented.
The answers to the country’s economic problems are not hidden or elusive, yet most of us here know that nobody in any political party has the courage to speak the answers, let alone put them into policies and action.
We are also well aware of the vested interests ranged against MMT and the hostility of a deeply corrupt media opposing any progressive policies from the left of politics. We are seeing attacks on Zack Polanski for criticing police violence, while Farage’s open venality is glossed over.
I am pleased that this blog, in particular, is holding steadfastly to the truth and that it’s main author has not given an inch in support of that truth.
Keep on keeping on.
I will try
Who knows, but I suspect Burnham could win in the right place in Greater Manchester (or the NW). There were actually parts of GM and its surrounds where Labour did relatively well (held the councils in Bury and Trafford). Went to NOC in Preston but only lost a few seats – a very different story to much of the NW, which I guess tells us that the Preston voters appreciated the council’s distinctive way of doing things.
He would need to be a decided optimist. People do not like by elections of this sort. .
I think Burnham would have a massive incumbency factor if he stood in a Manchester seat. That said, I think in the national party he would follow the same dull, ineffective economic policies as his predecessor and the bounce in the polls would be all but gone by Christmas.
Richard Burgon has just been on LBC explaining why Starmer must go, and why a new Leader must be selected from outside the Cabinet. They’re all tainted by association. I agree; but it’s unlikely.
If Starmer were genuinely to put country before Party, he would resign / setting out a timetable for his leaving office. Anyone who can say in all seriousness “I’m not going to walk away and leave the country in chaos” with not a whiff of irony is completely disconnected from reality.
His political ineptitude and multiple unforced errors – for which he accepts responsibility but suffers no consequences – are piled so high that he is now in the position of having lost the confidence of both the country AND his own Party. He is too weakened at home – and now also abroad – to continue in office.
Soneone needs to tell Starmer that the country does not see him as a man courageously battling on against hostile external forces, with the people right behind him. It may be how he sees himself, but that perception is fatally flawed. It actually epitomises his inability to see himself as others see him, revealing a void where empathy should be.
Remaining as Prime Minister is not brave. It is cowardly.
Much to agree with
I think my views on Starmer are clear – I have nothing good to say about either his abilities or his moral sense – but even so, I couldn’t quite believe how awful his Guardian article was yesterday – how it added absolutely nothing to the vacuous garbage he has spouted since 2020, just another “reset” but with no changes whatsoever and all the usual Starmeresque attempts to tick all the boxes in the prompt sheet supplied to him by the latest focus group. Did no one take him aside and say, “Keir, this is not good enough, you have to come up with specific policy changes, or else give way to someone else who can.”
(Even going back to his abandoned 10 pledges would be better than nothing)
Maybe he’ll have another purge against those pesky rebel MPs…
Much to agree with
That article was terrible
ChatGPT probably wrote it
I think the Tories proved (eventually) that it is pointless replacing the leader if you are planning to pursue the same failing neo-liberal economic policies. There might be a brief bounce from an expectant public, but it won’t last. Unless someone in the Labour Party actually wants a radical change of course (and I don’t think even their left wing do) then it is fairly pointless replacing Starmer.
The people of Lewisham, where I live, Voted Green. We canvassed, we stood and we won the Mayor. Starmer is finished, he thought there was no opposition. But he forgot us.
Well done
Those of us who were fortunate to have had the benefits of a democratic socialist government remember days of hope. Working people who had experienced the horrors of the 1930s. My parents would tell us kids about the suffering of a population that lived in a country that colonised a quarter of the globe. My grandad was sent down the pit at the age of 12. All that changed. Full employment for the very first time in history. A health service that was the envy of the world. I coiuld go on. Then in 1979 along came Thatcher . She deliberately took it away. Neoliberalism was imposed. For 45 years that has been in place . Our country has gone backwards. All the benefits brought by a left wing administration were repealed. Every administration since1979 has moved further to the Right. The result is a shattered nation .Britain has fallen behind every comparable European country. The country that is more unequal in Europe is Bulgaria.. The Right is wholly responsible for the state we are in. Yet there may be a Fascist government in power soon. What gives anyone the idea that a more extreme Right will improve matters. During my years on this earth the Right has worsened conditions in the UK. The Mcmillan Tories aren’t included in that criticism. They stayed with the consensus. Democratic Socialism is the only hope for mankind. I quote Nye Bevan. The country needs a leader like him .
I have a dream….
Starmer wakes up. He stops listening to the Labour right. He replaces the chancellor with someone that isn’t neoliberal. Maybe asks you for advice.
Blair and Brown didn’t do anything of use until two years in. I live in hope.